Guest of the Week (10/20/17): Maribel Lopez, Lopez Research LLC.

Guest of the Week (10/20/17)

Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst, Lopez Research LLC

Congratulations Maribel! You are theCUBE’s Guest of the Week.

Artificial intelligence is a big deal at the moment, no pun intended. So far this year, venture capitalists have invested $7.6 billion in artificial intelligence tech, according to PitchBook Data. That is close to double the $4 billion they dropped on AI deals just two years ago. What face-melting, futuristic technologies can we expect from these billions spent on research and development? Actually, they may just be easier and more intuitive user interfaces for tech we already have.

“The AI concept is really just about creating usability,” said Maribel Lopez, founder and principal analyst at Lopez Research LLC.

This is not to downplay the complexity of AI or the value of usability. A knob or dial too many can make the difference between an otherwise genius technology sitting on a developer’s shelf or flying off store shelves. “That was or used to be the hallmark of Apple,” Lopez said.

Apple Inc. built its brand by outfitting complicated tech with easy interfaces that users loved. Now complexity seems to be getting the best of even Apple’s deft engineers, Lopez said during an interview at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. She spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

“So how do we get this back to … we can use the stuff that we already have built?” Lopez asked.